Europe’s Second-Choice Prime Minister sat forward on his little bench, where he preferred to sit silent, absorbing the conversation like a patient sponge. It was half deference that made him the quietest of the three Hive leaders here, but half exhaustion. History does not give with both hands. If the European Union enjoyed an easier birth than the other Hives, its apparatus a century old before the Great Renunciation, it pays the price whenever its nation-strats rehash their ancient grudges: you seized my borderlands, you executed my hero, you conquered me a thousand years ago and I remember. All Europeans are equally guilty, English, Flemish, Kurdish, myself no less, for I catch myself from time to time rejecting good sense just because it came from a Turk’s lips. The strat delegates who make up Europe’s Parliament, and the strat leaders—Presidents and Premiers, French, Belgian, Laotian, Canadian—who sit on her Executive Council, they all answer, not just to Now, but to the pride of Then, and every problem must consider the silent wishes of countless ancestors. For Casimir Perry, a man who is no king, to herd these vindictive cats toward compromise takes every card in statecraft’s deck, and more hours than any man should spend awake. “I’m calling a hit,” he said.

Ockham’s eyes grew round as planets. “A hit now, Prime Minister?”

“It can’t wait. We have a Hive to save.” Perry’s gesture brought the files up in all their lenses. “The Cousins are toppling, not just weakening, toppling, the whole Hive. Masami Mitsubishi is your ba’kid, Andō, how could you let them put Cousins’ Feedback Bureau Chief Darcy Sok on their Seven-Ten list? Have you even seen the footage from Casablanca? With the furor after the theft of the list, there are more journalists at the CFB now than employees. The Feedback Bureau is the heart of the Hive. If word gets out what’s really been going on in there, that’s it for the Cousins, they’re dead, and I don’t just mean Bryar Kosala. It doesn’t matter they’re the second-largest Hive, after a blow like this they’ll shrink to smallest in no time, if they manage to stay together as a Hive at all.”

With feather-smooth motions and an embroidered handkerchief, the Duke made art even of blowing his nose. “Is that bad?”

“The dissolution of a Hive? Of course it’s bad! We’re not talking about the Masons here. The Cousins may not be in our alliance, but all our members benefit from them, depend on them, every day.”

Andō frowned, impassive. “The Masons and the Cousins agree too often. Between them they have 48 percent of the population.”

The claim made Perry stiffen. “Masons and Cousins never agree, they’re polar opposites.”

“Exactly, they propose opposite plans, then compromise, and reduce any debate to reconciling their two proposals and ignoring everybody else’s.”

“If you were ever there for the debates,” the Duke added, “you’d understand.”

Andō took charge before the Outsider could return the slight. “You know my bash’child Toshi works in the Censor’s office in Romanova. Before all this began, their prediction was that, within two years, the Masons plus Cousins will go over 50 percent, and the 36 percent we have between the three of us will shrink to 33 percent or less. The Seven-Ten list mess has only accelerated that; it could happen this year. We can’t let the Masons and Cousins create a real majority.”